Beyond Clusters:
The implications of Life Science Commodity Chains for Less-favoured Regions
(RES-000-22-2292)
1. Project Outline
As developed countries have lost comparative advantage to developing countries with lower labour costs they have increasingly sought to promote ‘competitiveness’ through the expansion of the ‘knowledge economy’. For less-favoured regions (LFRs) in these developed countries, however, this shift to knowledge-based sectors like the life sciences presents a number of difficulties.
- The existing uneven development of the knowledge economy means that these LFRs may lack the basic infrastructure needed to attract and embed new forms of employment, compounding their already disadvantaged position.
- The success of the few ‘growth regions’ in developed countries reinforces continuing uneven development across regional economies, especially in terms of the strength of the extra-local linkages that tie the growth regions into a global knowledge network to the exclusion of LFRs.
- The power differentials between elite actors within growth regions and LFRs can produce an uneven influence on the arrangement of the value chain as some regions benefit from more high-end activity than others.
To study these processes, this project adopts a global commodity chains approach to explore the Scottish life sciences industry. In so doing it incorporates a number of geographical and sociological concepts to provide the project with a theoretical framework that can address issues of adjustment and change in different regions and how they are positioned and repositioned in relation to the changing needs of commodity production.
Thus regional development is seen to result from both the internal and external capabilities of embedded organisational and institutional actors, especially how they adapt to changing priorities of local, national and global economies. Concentrations of activity (e.g. clusters) can therefore be seen as embedded in wider global commodity chains that depend on ‘alliance-driven’ co-ordination and governance to facilitate the concentration and dispersal of innovation and knowledge production across space.
The core competencies for actors in this alliance-driven model are the ability to collaborate, acquire and absorb knowledge, and operate across different institutional and regulatory regimes. This model contrasts with earlier models identified in the GCC literature (e.g. producer-driven and consumer-driven), although these models concentrate on developing countries and the possibility of upgrading through knowledge transfer and technology acquisition from developed countries. However, because the alliance-driven model is concerned with the inter-linkages and inter-dependencies which constitute knowledge-based industries it can be applied to developed countries and especially the issues of upgrading less-favoured regions like Scotland.
2. Project Objectives
- Objective 1: To explore how different actors are spatially embedded in global commodity chains that depend on alliance-driven governance (e.g. life sciences).
- Objective 2: To consider the implications for less-favoured regions of the alliance-driven governance model. The main questions here concern the importance of horizontal and vertical relations between organisations and institutions in these regions and other locations.
- Objective 3: To consider how power is distributed between different actors in global commodity chains in different places. Key questions concern the organisation and operation of relationships between different actors and locations.
- Objective 4: To consider the policy implications for Scotland and other UK regions involved in life science commodity chains, particularly in terms of their ability to achieve sustainable life science sectors in the context of changing innovation systems and global markets.
3. Project Design
The research project is split between a number of stages that roughly correspond to the four objectives.
- First, we will map out the Scottish life sciences industry using secondary data to provide an overview of the sector.
- Second, we will survey life science firms to identify the spatial and organisational processes of global commodity chains in these firms.
- Third we will interview firms about the co-ordination of the commodity chains in order to explore how the processes of power are played out across different commodity chain actors. During this data collection stage we will also consider how these processes can be organised so that regions can upgrade and adjust to global economic changes.
- Finally we will interview actors drawn from the institutional environment in Scotland in order to consider the impact that Scottish institutions have on the life sciences.
All the empirical fieldwork will be positioned within a theoretical framework that is based on an alliance-driven governance model in which collaborative, horizontal relationships across the global commodity chain are emphasised.
4. Project Outputs
Background
Birch, K. (2006) Global Commodity Chains in the UK Biotechnology Industry: An Alliance-Driven Governance Model, Discussion Paper 13.
Birch, K. (2007) The Knowledge-Space Dynamic in the UK Biotech Industry: Function, Relation, and Association, in Creative Regions: Technology, Culture and Knowledge Entrepreneurship by Dafna Schwartz and Philip Cooke (eds). London: Routledge.
Birch, K. (2007) Knowledge, Space and Biotechnology, Geography Compass 1, pp.1097-1117.
Birch, K. (2008) Alliance-driven Governance: Applying a Global Commodity Chains Approach to the UK Biotechnology Industry, Economic Geography 84(1), pp.83-103.
Working Papers
Birch, K. (2007) Knowledge, Place and Power: Conceptualising Value Creation in Knowledge-Based Commodity Chains, CPPR Working Paper 13
Publications
Birch, K. and Cumbers, A. (in press) 'Alliance-driven governance in Scottish life science commodity chains and its contribution to regional development', in Life Science Ventures by M. Jones (ed.), Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Policy Papers
Beyond Clusters Policy Briefing
Life Science Policy Report (February 2009)
5. Contacts
Principal Investigator: Dr Kean Birch
Co-investigator: Dr Andy Cumbers
6. Links
Economic and Social Research Council
ESRC Website